Intellectual history
Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the
As a field of intellectual enquiry, the history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of
The concerns of intellectual history are the intelligentsia and the critical study of the ideas expressed in the texts produced by intellectuals; therein the difference between intellectual history from other forms of cultural history that study visual and non-verbal forms of evidence. In the production of knowledge, the concept of the intellectual as a political citizen of public society dates from the 19th century, and identifies a man or a woman who is professionally engaged with critical thinking that is applicable to improving society. Nonetheless, anyone who explored his or her thoughts on paper can be the subject of an intellectual history. For instance, The Cheese and the Worms (1976), Carlo Ginzburg's study of the 16th-century Italian miller Menocchio (1532–1599) and his cosmology, falls within the genre of intellectual history (as well as cultural history, the history of mentalities, and microhistory).[4] The Journal of the History of Ideas is one of the flagship journals in intellectual history.
History of the discipline
Intellectual history developed from the
The contemporary understanding of intellectual history emerged in the immediate postwar period of the 1940s, in its earlier incarnation as "the history of ideas" under the leadership of
Intellectual history is multidisciplinary and includes the history of philosophy and the history of economic thought.
In continental Europe, the pertinent example of intellectual history is Begriffsgeschichte (History of Concepts, 2010), by
Methodology
The Lovejoy approach
The historian
Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as
Unit-idea
In the History of Ideas, Lovejoy used the unit-idea (concept) as the basic unit of historical analysis. The unit-idea is the building block of the history of ideas; though relatively stable in itself, the unit-idea combines with other unit-ideas into new patterns of meaning in the context of different historical eras. Lovejoy said that the historian of ideas is tasked with identifying unit-ideas and with describing their historical emergence and development into new conceptual forms and combinations. The methodology of the unit-idea means to extract the basic idea from a work of philosophy and from a philosophical movement, with the investigative principles of the methodology being: (1) assumptions, (2) dialectical motives, (3) metaphysical pathos, and (4) philosophical semantics. The principles of methodology define the overarching philosophical movement in which the historian can find the unit-idea, which then is studied throughout the history of the particular idea.[10]
The British historian
The historian Peter Gordon said that unlike Lovejoy's practise of the History of Ideas, the praxis of Intellectual History studies and deals with ideas in broad historical contexts.[17] That unlike historians of ideas and philosophers (History of Philosophy), intellectual historians, "tend to be more relaxed about crossing the boundary between philosophical texts and non-philosophical contexts . . . [Intellectual historians regard] the distinction between 'philosophy' and 'non-philosophy' as something that is, itself, historically conditioned, rather than eternally fixed." Therefore, intellectual history is a means for reproducing a historically valid interpretation of a philosophical argument, by implementation of a context in which to study ideas and philosophical movements.[17]
Foucault's approach
Michel Foucault rejected narrative, the historian's traditional mode of communication, because of what he believed to be the shallow treatment of facts, figures, and people in a long period, rather than deep research that shows the interconnections among the facts, figures, and people of a specific period of history.[18] Foucault said that historians should reveal historical descriptions through the use of different perspectives of the "archaeology of knowledge", whose historical method for writing history is in four ideas.
First, the archaeology of knowledge defines the period of history through philosophy, by way of the discourses among thought, representation, and themes. Second, that the notion of discontinuity has an important role in the disciplines of history. Third, that discourse does not seek to grasp the moment in history, wherein the social and the persons under study are inverted into each other. Fourth, that Truth is not the purpose of history, but the discourse contained in history.[19]
Long period approach
Global intellectual history
In the 21st century, the field of
In 2016, the Routledge journal Global Intellectual History (ed. Richard Whatmore) was established.[21] J. G. A. Pocock and John Dunn are among those who recently have argued for a more global approach to intellectual history in contrast to Eurocentrism.[22][23]
See also
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- Cambridge School (intellectual history)
- Global intellectual history
- Great Conversation
- Warsaw School (history of ideas)
References
- ^ Grafton, Anthony. "The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950–2000 and Beyond", Journal of the History of Ideas 67#1 (2006): 1–32. online
- ^ "The Invention of Humanity – Siep Stuurman | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
- S2CID 166543159.
- ^ Julie Fox-Horton (November 2015). "Review of Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller". H-Net Reviews. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
- ^ John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Biography, Macmillan, 1933.
- ^ Clark, Peter. The Keynesian Revolution in the Making, 1924–1936 (1988); Donald Markwell, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace (2006) Oxford University Press.
- ^ Richter, Melvin. "Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas", Journal of the History of Ideas (1987): 247–263. in JSTOR
- ^ Richter, Melvin. "Reconstructing the History of Political Languages: Pocock, Skinner, and the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe", History and Theory (1990): 38–70. online[permanent dead link]
- ^ Hellström, Petter (2016). "The great chain of ideas : The past and future of the history of ideas, or why we should not return to Lovejoy". Lychnos: 179–188.
- ^ ISBN 0-674-36153-9
- ^ Ronald Paulson English Literary History at the Johns Hopkins University in New Literary History, Vol. 1, No. 3, History and Fiction (Spring, 1970), pp. 559–564
- ISBN 0-313-20504-3
- ISBN 0-691-09026-2
- ^ Skinner, Quentin. (1969) "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas", History and Theory 8 (1): 3–53.
- ISBN 978-3-8252-3314-3
- S2CID 166543159.
- ^ a b Gordon, Peter E. "What is intellectual history? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field". Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- ^ Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Foucault: On History", Introductory Guide to Critical Theory.
- ^ Foucault, Michel. "Archaeology of Knowledge, Introduction", A.M. Sherida Smith, Ed. Vintage, 1982.
- ISBN 9780231534598.
- ^ "Global Intellectual History: Vol 4, No 2". Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
- S2CID 148755525.
- ^ Dunn, John (2013-11-21). "Why We Need A Global History of Political Thought". Retrieved 2019-06-24.
Further reading
About intellectual history
- Jay, Martin (2022). Genesis and Validity: The Theory and Practice of Intellectual History. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-9999-1.
Surveys
- Assis, Arthur Alfaix (2021). "History of Ideas and Its Surroundings". In: Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Byrd, B. (2020). "The Rise of African American Intellectual History." Modern Intellectual History.
- Horowitz, Maryanne Cline, ed. (2004). New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-0684313771.
- Isaac, Joel et al., eds. The Worlds of American Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2017), 391 pp
- Historical Specificity of Modern Social and Political Thought, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para Innovar y Mejorar la Educación (PAPIME), Creación de Infografías Animadas para la Enseñanza de la Materia: Introducción al Pensamiento Social y Político Moderno (PE301017) de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
- Global intellectual history(2013)
- Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas edited by Philip P. Wiener, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973–74. online: Volume 1, 2, 3, 4
- Grafton, Anthony. "The history of ideas: Precept and practice, 1950–2000 and beyond." Journal of the History of Ideas 67#1 (2006): 1–32. online
- American Historical Review (1951) 56#3 pp. 453–471 in JSTOR
- Rahman, M. M. ed. Encyclopaedia of Historiography (2006) Excerpt and text search
- Schneider, Axel, and Daniel Woolf, eds. The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945 excerpt
- Woolf D. R. A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (2 vol 1998) excerpt and text search
Monographs
- Noam Chomsky et al., The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, New Press 1997
- Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)
- Bertrand Russell. A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945.
- Toews, John E. "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn. The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience", in: The American Historical Review, 92/4 (1987), 879–907.
- Turner, Frank M. European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche (2014)
- Riccardo Bavaj, Intellectual History, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (2010), URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Intellectual_History
Primary sources
- George B. de Huszar, ed. The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960. anthology by many contributors.
External links
- Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973–74. Volume 1: Abstraction in the Formation of Concepts TO Design Argument, Volume 2: Despotism TO Law, Volume 3: Law, Concept of TO Protest Movements, Volume 4: Psychological Ideas in Antiquity TO Zeitgeist (Courtesy of the University of Virginia)
- Historical Specificity of Modern Social and Political Thought, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para Innovar y Mejorar la Educación (PAPIME), Creación de Infografías Animadas para la Enseñanza de la Materia: Introducción al Pensamiento Social y Político Moderno (PE301017) de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
- The International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians, a project launched by the Journal of the History of Ideas
- A guide to applying to do graduate work in intellectual history
- "The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950–2000 and Beyond", Anthony Grafton, Journal of the History of Ideas 67.1 (2006) 1–32
- "Intellectual History/History of Ideas", Seán Farrell Moran, in The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. I
- "What is Intellectual History Now?", A. Brett in: What is History Now?
- "What Is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field" (Peter Gordon, 2012)